The Escapist | Page 8

isn't my little truncheon. I hope you spent that money wisely," she purred.
There was no way she was going to start something in this closed environment, but it still couldn't be called the best of situations. I enquired if she would care to join me at the bar for drinks and left my aisle seat to follow her aft. I tried not to smile as I sensed a myriad male eyes following her aft with me. She was wearing a dress made of a material that had a sheen like silk but fitted tightly like rubber. It was green. Today her hair was blonde. She carried no bag, so unless she had a weapon concealed in one of her breasts she was not armed.
We sat at the bar.
"Your round," said Freida. "You owe me 96 million Stolis, so let's start drinking right away."
"You look well," I countered, as the barman prepared a Stoli on the rocks and a whiskey and cranberry. Freida smiled like a pubescent Lolita, except she was probably five times the right age. She was a miracle of contemporary surgery.
"And you look fantastic!" she returned, affecting coyness with a gently coquettish flick of? the head.
"So what is it you want?" I asked, tired already of these verbal games. Flirtatious banter was Freida's hallmark. She'd made quite a success of what amounted to annoying people into letting their guards down.
"I hear you're going straight on some research job," she finally answered. "Word gets around. It sounds interesting. Tell me about it."
So I outlined, at very great and boring length, how I was doing research into mental illness amongst private security staff on the job. I explained how I'd been to Nexus-7 to interview some former guards and an investigator who had gone completely insane. Her attempts to get a word in and prevent this clearly erroneous tide of verbal diarrhoea were to no avail. I was finally interrupted by the call to return to our seats for re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere and landing. I apologised for the premature interruption and promised to finish the story some time later.
We landed in the City Spaceport where St. Paul's Cathedral used to be. As I left the craft Freida scurried towards me and I found it impossible to rid myself of her. After a brief walk we found ourselves at an exclusive duty-free stand selling real fruit and vegetables. The tax on legumes was becoming extortionate. I decided that I'd had enough of Freida. Choosing a sizeable courgette from the selection on show, as if to examine it, I inched towards her. With a gesture from my free hand, I remarked how wonderfully ripe the microclimate-grown star fruit looked on a shelf high up and to the left. She glanced upwards and away. During her brief moment of distraction I served her an adequate but not too harsh blow to the head with the truncheon-like legume I had been pretending to study. She keeled forward and collapsed onto the citrus fruit section.
"Mind the oranges..." I exclaimed, to no avail. Her body sprawled amid a cascade of all-natural Vitamin C providers. When the vendor rushed out, I slipped her ample recompense for the damaged goods. Then I popped Freida into a taxi, closing her hand around the vegetable of her demise, and sent her to the casualty ward of St. Margaret's New Hospital. Not that she needed any medical attention - Freida was tougher than most people and probably immortal. I merely thought it would be an amusing touch for her to wake up in hospital just like the last time we met.
Back at my home I quickly checked my video-mail. There weren't many messages, just a few advertising circulars which had penetrated my anti-junk filters, and a final ransom message for a stolen sports car which I'd long since received the insurance money for. I was reminded that I hadn't yet driven the McLaren F45 I'd had delivered a few days previously. The McLaren had been an impulse purchase while waiting at the bar for a free table in McDonalds. The new job made taxis more appropriate, so I hadn't found the opportunity to take my new vehicle for a spin. After unpacking my bags from my lunar trip, I went down to the garage and climbed into the sleek, sexual McLaren. The way things were going, there didn't seem much point in pretending I was a poor neuropsychologist anymore. I might as well live a little. Switching the Autoroute off, I drove manually to the COSI offices.
Carmichael was not available to see me, so I took the tapes from the Nexus-7 clinic and wired myself into a few of them. I was most interested in those subjects who had developed withdrawal of consciousness in adulthood rather than those who